The Czech citizenship law has been criticized by civil-rights activists at home and abroad ever since it was introduced (three days before the Czech Republic became a separate state, on December 28, 1992). It has been repeatedly analysed and commented on also in Agora; therefore it is to be believed that an introduction to the problem need not be made again. However, on an official level, i.e. on various European forums, the reactions were somewhat muted. The review of the Czech application to the Council of Europe in 1993 admitted that the Council was not entirely satisfied with the Czech Republic's treatment of the Romany minority, and expressed some concern over the question of citizenship; it also stated, though, that the Council's representatives were assured that all Czechoslovak citizens resident before the Czecho-Slovak split on Czech territory were ENTITLED to Czech citizenship. The law itself, however, explicitly says something very different, and many people - predominantly Romanies - are left wi

thout any legal chance of obtaining citizenship in the country where they were born. Since July 1994, when the term for changing Slovak citizenship to Czech under the provisionary conditions of the Citizenship Law expired, many Czech Romanies had their social security cut and are treated virtually as illegal migrants in the country where they have lived all their life.

In this context, last week's Conference of the CSCE (Council for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and the Council of Europe on Romanies, which took place in Warsaw, represents a real breakthrough: for the first time, the Czech Republic came under harsh criticism on the international scene not only from NGOs but also from official representatives. In fact, the CSCE and Council of Europe actually urged the Czech Republic to change its law!

Why did this change of attitude occur?

First of all, the opponents of the law were competently represented at the Conference by Ina Zoon of the Tolerance Foundation (the author of a comprehensive study on the citizenship problem), Vaclav Trojan of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly and Pavel Uhl from HOST (Movement for Citizens solidarity and Tolerance). The Czech Government's representative claimed that the whole issue concerned only some 100 people whose requests for citizenship were turned down; the opponents of the law were able to produce concrete evidence that the Government was simply lying (for instance, more than 100 Romanies without citizenship only in the small town of Karvina etc). The IRU was represented at the forum by Nicolae Gheorghe of Rumania who also actively criticized the law.

The second factor was the unusually active role of the American CSCE delegation which led the attack on the Czech citizenship law. Washington was well informed for the last year especially by Ms. Zoon but the intensity of the American criticism was unprecedented. The American delegate actually called the resulting situation a "humanitarian crisis in the heart of Europe". Other delegations, governmental as well as non-governmental, gradually joined in (especially after the entirely unconvincing reply by the representative of the Czech Government), and the Vice-General Secretary of the Council of Europe finally urged the Czechs to change the law in order to "match European criteria". The Czech Constitutional Court having turned down a plea by left-wing MPs to declare the law unconstitutional, several European delegations openly advised the Czech opponents of the law to take the matter immediately to the Hague and to Strasbourg.

In the Czech Republic itself, the Warsaw Conference's criticism of the law was the first external criticism about which the readers have learned; major articles appeared in all newspapers. HOST is now preparing an open letter to the Czech Parliament, the Prime Minister and the President urging them to do all there is within their legal possibilities to change the law. Pressure is being put on the President by the Romany Democratic Congress, HCA and Tolerance Foundation to carry the case to the Constitutional Court again.